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In her native Britain Queen Elizabeth has more powers assigned to her than the average journalist, and certainly the average British citizen, seems to realize.

We expand on this in our book THE ORPHAN CONSPIRACIES: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

This lack of awareness (of the Queen’s true powers) is possibly due to the fact that she rarely exercises her authority and only seems to do so when there’s no alternative.

Nevertheless, the powers she has could be argued to be undemocratic given she is non-elected and received her authority by birth – all of which sound like the antithesis of a democracy.

This sentiment was echoed by Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, a British group which campaigns for an alternative to the monarchy. In an article by CNN (London) on June 1, 2012, Smith described the British Monarchy as being highly “secretive”.

Anti-Monarchist Graham Smith critical of the Crown’s “vast powers”.

“Having recently lobbied successfully to have itself removed entirely from the reaches of our Freedom of Information laws,” Smith stated, “it lobbies government ministers for improvements to its financial benefits and for its own private agenda.”

Smith continued, “The queen and Prince Charles must be asked for consent before our elected parliament is able to debate any legislation that affects their private interests … The “Crown” is the supreme authority in this country – not the people. The Crown has vast powers that cannot be challenged in a court of law and those powers are exercised by the queen on the instruction of our prime minister”.

The CNN article also mentioned the Queen’s ability to appoint government ministers and other public servants, as well as “the power to go to war, sign treaties and change the law through the little-understood Privy Council”.

Conspiracy theorists believe the Queen’s imperceptible wealth – the unknown element that apparently forms the bulk of her true net worth – goes hand in hand with her rarely acknowledged political powers in Britain and throughout much of the world.

According to this theory, the Queen’s overall’s wealth can essentially be compartmentalized into three separate categories: the Monarch, her visible fortune and, lastly and most importantly, her invisible fortune.

The Monarch

Much of Her Majesty’s net worth is said to be derived from the Commonwealth and includes millions of acres of Crown land and thousands of Crown companies. In Britain alone, the Monarch’s assets are colossal. On May 8, 2011, British newspaper The Telegraph reported the Crown Estate consisted of “a vast property empire dating back to the records of William the Conqueror in the Domesday Book of 1086”.

The Domesday Book is an ancient account of all the holdings of England.

The Monarch’s diverse UK assets range from Ascot Racecourse to London’s prime real estate district of Regent Street to shopping malls and industrial estates. It also owns a large percentage of Britain’s forests, farmland and estates, and the majority of Britain’s coastline, not to mention the rights to all the land’s gold and silver discoveries.

As the reigning British Monarch, the Queen is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which may or may not carry financial rewards either directly or indirectly. For Christian readers this may seem to be a blasphemous statement, but consider the vast financial empire of the Vatican. Granted, the Church of England is not the Catholic Church, but it could still be enormously wealthy in its own right with centuries-old assets.

Officially speaking, the Monarch’s assets and revenues are separate to the Queen’s personal net worth. However, the two overlap and are not mutually exclusive.